Hollywood's doomed BioShock movie was going to be beautiful

There's always a girl, there's always a lighthouse, and perhaps behind one of those doors is a universe where the Hollywood's ill-fated BioShock movie was released.

If so, here's hoping it turned out looking like the concept art of Jim Martin, who was hired to work on the project (thanks, ComicBookMovie).

Martin's other work includes concept illustrations and storyboards for Pirates of the Caribbean, Chronicles of Riddick, The Matrix sequels and Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

BioShock's underwater city of Rapture certainly looks true to the game, but the world has also been expanded with new areas. There's this section, showing a mass of girders buried deep in Rapture's belly:

And this alternative take on the workshops where Big Daddies are built and repaired:

BioShock creator Ken Levine revealed to Eurogamer last year that he had personally canned the film project after several attempts to get the movie made - first with Pirates of the Caribbean movie Gore Verbinski, then with 28 Weeks Later helmer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.

"There was a deal in place, and it was in production at Universal - Gore Verbinski was directing it," he said. "My theory is that Gore wanted to make a hard R film - which is like a 17/18 plus, where you can have blood and naked girls. Well, I don't think he wanted naked girls. But he wanted a lot of blood.

"Then Watchmen came out, and it didn't do well for whatever reason. The studio then got cold feet about making an R rated $200 million film, and they said what if it was a $80 million film - and Gore didn't want to make a $80 million film.

"They brought another director in, and I didn't really see the match there - and 2K's one of these companies that puts a lot of creative trust in people. So they said if you want to kill it, kill it. And I killed it."